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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22622572">head like a haunted house</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/wajjs/pseuds/wajjs'>wajjs</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Mind Games, being taken for a ride inside your own head and being like wtf</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:40:56</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,281</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22622572</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/wajjs/pseuds/wajjs</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>These might not be the things he wishes for the most, but they just might be close enough to what that small part of him sometimes thinks of. Sometimes, when he lets it win. When he's certain it won't bring any harm.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Batfamily Members &amp; Jason Todd</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>66</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>head like a haunted house</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <b>head like a haunted house</b>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>  It’s not easy to tell. These type of things are never made to be like that, they are never quite that easy or quite that telling. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  He looks around and feels so light. Like nothing is out of order and like he’s finally found his place, somewhere to belong, somewhere to rest. There are open arms and eyes with no shadows and a happiness that he thought long forgotten from the very moment he made the mistake of being born. Or, well, that’s not so much </span>
  <em>
    <span>his</span>
  </em>
  <span> mistake, is it? After all he had no saying in that. So that’s one thing off the list.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  The doors of the old house, magnificent, glorious, enormous and soul-taking - the doors of the old house open for him and this time he doesn’t track mud or blood or sorrow. He laughs a loose sound out of his chest where nothing rattles, his eyes crinkle at the corners and his cheeks are warm. Welcome, the walls say, the floors sing, the chandelier that’s been replaced many times whispers. Welcome, <em>son,</em> they say above all, an echo of the only voice that’s ever mattered to him, through hell and through purgatory.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  It’s not easy to tell.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  Why would it be easy to tell?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  That is not how things like to go.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  He walks into the dining room and there is laughter, there is </span>
  <em>
    <span>life.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Isn’t that odd, how there used to be heavy shadows, heavier than the expensive drapery, heavier than the ghosts they all carry - how there used to be a haunting here, and now there is not? Everything is so lively! Isn’t that odd? Isn’t that strange?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “Jay!” Dick laughs and hugs him, pulls him in, cradles him. “You made it!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  This close they can count each other’s lashes and the candles in Grayson’s green eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  Tim nudges him with a bony elbow and grins, too. That’s. That is...  “We were waiting for you,” he says and makes him forget what he was about to think.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  But.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  But…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  He looks at Dick. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Really</span>
  </em>
  <span> looks and it’s like he’s trying to rip into a veil with no fingers and no hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “Wait, wait,” Bruce is walking towards him and he’s too young, like he was before, before— Breathing is an alien concept.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “Wait!” He yells, tries to resist the pull he’s noticing now, looks at Dick with the look of betrayal and heartbreak, “Your eyes are fucking blue!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  You’ve been trained better than this.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  This is, this isn’t, this can’t be.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  But before he can taste certainty he’s drowning again.</span>
</p>
<p>°</p>
<p>
  <span>  He comes to with a yawn. He’s warm. He’s always warm, it seems, which is strange but for reasons he can’t quite place. Like there is some other life in which he’s not - warm, that is, he’s not that, he stopped being after whatever it is that occurred happened. There’s a weight on the side of the bed, a bed so huge it’s like an ocean, and he turns to see blonde hair spilled all over a disarray of pillows. His heart leaps to his mouth and he wants to puke, yet when he tries to sit up he notices there’s another weight on his arm, atop his chest - short black hair, a peaceful smile.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “Good morning,” Cass says and her voice makes Steph groan herself into awakeness.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  Damian, who somehow ended by the feet of the bed, rises too, grumpy but adorable in his onesie that matches the one they are all wearing. “Could you not make any less noise? Some of us still wish to sleep.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  This is <em>too</em> strange.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “What the fuck,” he says, with feeling, because yes, this time it’s like no one’s even trying to make it work. Cass laughs a wicked thing, catches the pillow Steph throws her way and snuffes him out swiftly, quicker and softer than a damned crowbar to the head.</span>
</p>
<p>°</p>
<p>
  <span>  The next time he is alone and that is normal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  For some reason he picks up his phone, tries to call Roy but the call never connects. For some reason he shouts for Artemis and the world doesn’t even blink. He looks around his flat for his gear before he remembers that he has no gear, maybe that game he’s been playing all night long has gotten to his head and now he’s all confused. He wonders what it would be like, running in the night, jumping from roof to roof with the grace of a bird in flight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  He remembers there is a place nearby, thai, it opened recently. Putting on his jacket, he pats for his keys, finds his wallet and out of his wallet falls a picture.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  Of a sky so dark one would think light never existed, if not for the one that illuminates the sign of a bat among the grey smog.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  Outside there is a fight and it’s quickly escalating. Someone fires their gun though the bullet goes way off its course, hitting an apartment wall and piercing him right between the eyes.</span>
</p>
<p>°</p>
<p>
  <span>  He’s floating, the green water soothes his nerves. The sky is cloudless and eternal.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  What is it about him, what is it about <em>normal</em> that avoids him so much? He signed away his rights to a life, hasn’t he? He signed them all away and now he doesn’t even have scraps left to make something halfway decent.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  Looking to the side there is blood all around him - unclear if it his or someone else’s, unclear if it’s blood or just something of a different nature that wants to fuck with him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “What is the point in dying,” he says to no one in particular. The ocean replies, grabs his hand, pulls him under. There is something he should be remembering. He was trained better than this, he was trained to deal with this, he should know, he should… he should…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  So he frees his hand, kicks and leaps away from the tugging force driving him senseless. The resistance is there, something that’s trying to stop him from getting out, something that’s working against him, that hates him, wants him dead.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “Get in fucking line,” he snarls, because it’s not the first thing that ever tried and it surely won’t be the last.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  Next time.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  Next time he’ll do better.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  This time he uses all the strength he has left to fight it left and right, to fight it till they are both bloody and ripping into broken bones - and when he opens his eyes he’s in the cave, machines beeping happily at his sides, an alarm going off, rushing steps.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  The cold feels real here, as real as it ever was (as it will always be). There had been so many signs, so many details betraying the feeling, still he had lost himself for a minute there, hoping, perhaps, wishing, maybe. It doesn’t hurt to know that he now has a new target within himself to destroy, to squish, to grind into dust. Like a memory that’s given away and that he no longer has but he sometimes feels the echo of once possessing it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  He turns his head to find Dick looking at him, eyes alright, and he can’t help it: he laughs.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “Jason—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “It’s as I feared, he’s lost his mind, the spell—”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “Did it not work?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  “Jay!” Dick shakes him a little, not gently, “Jay, please,”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>  He laughs from deep within his chest. Now he remembers everything and everything is a huge pain in the ass. “Hey, dickhead,” he says, tasting the words which are the perfect weight on his tongue, and no one’s going to understand but he doesn’t care, he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does not care,</span>
  </em>
  <span> “ever tried green?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>°</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>(looking at all my other wips) damn when will my writing come back from wip war...</p></blockquote></div></div>
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